It started with a misunderstanding. Cherry was wandering through JJ Green weekend market—the kind of market that doesn’t exist anymore, not in the same way—when the sky cracked open. Rain came fast, tropical, and unapologetic (classic). She was 23, Arizona-born, working as a nanny in Thailand, hunting linen on her day off. And then: a wave.
From across the market, a guy gestured to her. It felt rude to ignore it, so she ducked inside the shop, assuming he was the owner. He wasn’t. “I thought it was his store,” Cherry says, laughing. “I felt that remorse—like, oh no, if I walk away now, that’s rude. But no, he was just trying to be nice. It was raining like crazy, and he didn’t want me to get sick. Thais are obsessed with the idea that you’ll get sick from getting rain in your hair.”
That guy was Home Phuangfueang. That meetcute—oddly tender, vaguely awkward—became the origin point for Nong Rak, the slow-growing, hard-earned, emotionally resonant brand he and Cherry, who would later take his surname after they were married, would build together over the next decade.
In the early days, Cherry was hand-sewing linen outfits by candlelight, still without a sewing machine, sourcing fabric from Bangkok’s Little India. Home was a natural dresser, a former graphic design student who’d done time at a fashion house and loved vintage before he ever thought about designing. They were young, broke—first in Bangkok, then in Portland, with a newborn asleep in the next room.
They named the brand Nong Rak after something Home’s older relatives called them at their wedding. “It means like, little love,” Cherry explains. “At the time I thought it was like a conceptual name—puppy love, baby love—but it turns out it’s also a term of endearment, like calling someone sweetie. Still, it stuck with both of us.”
But Nong Rak didn’t come out of a vision board. It came from necessity. Of trial, error, and Instagram. “I remember we had no money,” Home says. “Like, nothing. We wanted to open a little shop. There was this tiny storefront in Portland we tried to rent, the size of a bathroom. We even got a loan approved, but the landlord said no. He said we were too young.” Cherry chimes in: “That was one of the first real heartbreaks. But looking back, I’m so glad it didn’t happen. We weren’t ready. It would’ve crushed us.”
That rejection turned out to be a strange kind of gift. With nowhere else to go, they moved to Cherry’s mom’s house in California, just outside Sacramento—the only place they could live for free. That pause gave them time to rethink everything. By the time their vintage sales on Depop and Etsy took them to New York for A Current Affair—where they made the most money they had ever seen at that point—they were unknowingly about to outgrow vintage. The pandemic hit, and everything shifted.
In the middle of the global shutdown, Cherry’s dad—who had been working at a diner on the East Coast—wanted out, too. So they all moved to Tucson, Arizona, together. That’s where Nong Rak really began to take shape—in an incredible adobe-style house filled with skylights, soft desert light, and a sense of calm they hadn’t felt in years. The house had a guest cottage for Cherry’s dad and a large front room they used as their studio. It was the perfect place to start experimenting—first with vintage resale, then with yarn, fiber art, and early knitwear. They styled, shot, and shipped from that desert sanctuary, building momentum through photo shoots and online drops. Eventually, they made the leap to New York to chase momentum and opportunity, riding the early waves of success until burnout and illness forced another change of plans.
Stuck at home in Tucson, Cherry picked up a crochet hook. Then came a knitting machine. Then came mohair. And the response? Immediate. Ferocious. They couldn’t make things fast enough. “It was wild,” Cherry says. “I just made this mohair bucket hat, oversized and sort of absurd, and it sold out immediately. And then people wanted more. Bigger. Brighter. It snowballed in a way we didn’t expect. We were totally unprepared.” Home adds, “We didn’t even have proper packaging. Sometimes we were wrapping things in tissue from the grocery store. Every time we thought we’d caught up, demand jumped again.”
From there: requests from stylists, features, a collaboration with Marc Jacobs. Demand grew faster than capacity. They brought on friends to help. They tried to scale. It nearly broke them. “I was getting really sick,” Cherry says. “Like, physically. I had this tumor behind my ear that had to be removed. I was burned out. I couldn’t keep up with production, and I was doing all the business paperwork too. It was bad.”
They decided to pull back. They left New York—where they’d been living, working, and trying to scale their production—and returned to Bangkok. The move wasn’t sudden, but it felt necessary. The cost of living, the burnout, the pressure was pushing them toward something simpler, more rooted. Bangkok wasn’t just familiar; it was restorative. “It feels full circle,” Home says. “But also like we see everything differently now. We have a plan. We can breathe.”
Their apartment-slash-studio in Langsuan, just a stone’s throw from where I stayed in central Bangkok, is a perfect expression of their aesthetic: rustic Thai wood, retro charm, warm almost sepia-toned light streaming in through windows, stacked yarns like candy-colored relics (they’re known for their delectable palette)—a creative oasis that feels lived-in and loved. Nong Rak today is less about hype and more about building a sustainable rhythm. They’ve shifted to custom orders, smaller drops, and are now experimenting with Thai silk to expand beyond knits.
Their world-building now includes their son, Casper—a spitting image of the design duo—who I spoke to briefly. He’s eight, opinionated, and already dabbling in needle-felting. When I ask him what he thinks of all this, he shrugs, grinning: “It’s cool. I like picking the colors.” Cherry smiles and adds, “He’s got a good eye.”
If Nong Rak has a signature, it’s not just mohair or texture or color (though those help). It’s a kind of atmosphere. A familiarity that feels not nostalgic, exactly, but unplaceable. “We always talk about wanting it to feel like something lost in time,” Cherry says. “Or maybe something that could’ve existed in another timeline, somewhere you’ve never been but somehow recognize.”
That tension between the alien and the familiar defines their design language. They pull from Thai folk art, post-punk DIY, outsider art, and retro-futurist silhouettes. They don’t chase trends. They don’t drop seasonal collections. They just make things when they’re ready. Back in Bangkok, they’re rethinking what expansion even means. They dream about a concept shop and workshops and giving jobs to Thai artisans. But they’re in no rush. “We want to grow in a way that still feels like us,” Home says. “Where we can still be creative, still be close to the work.”
Cherry echoes the sentiment. “I don’t think we’re meant to grow in a straight line. Everything about this brand has been one step at a time—sometimes forward, sometimes sideways. But it’s always felt real.”
And maybe that’s the true design of Nong Rak—not just clothes, but a slower, stranger, more deliberate way to live. Even in the hardest times, the heart stayed. Call it instinct. Call it puppy love.